


Golden

by theLiterator



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1325380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Kill him if you will; you know I will support you. But look him in the eyes as you do it, at least,” Fenris said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Stop!” Fenris snapped, and Anders shuddered to hear him. He had forgotten, for a few moments, with his eyes closed tightly against the flickering lights of Kirkwall burning.

“Something changed, now, while we were fighting. Can you not tell?” he asked.

Anders flinched. “Nothing has changed,” he said. “There can be no compromise. You must do as you said. Kill me.”

“Fenris?” Hawke asked. “What are you getting at? Merrill?”

“I think he’s right. Something’s different. That last healing wave of his felt different, but I thought maybe it was just me, or everything that was happening.”

“It felt the way it used to,” Fenris said, low and much, much closer.

Anders knew, then, that the damned, meddling, stubborn elf wouldn’t let Hawke do it. He had to chance it, though he was sure there was no way. He’d tried, in the few lucid moments left to him in the past few years; how he’d tried. He drew his belt knife and heard Sebastian call out a warning.

 _Of course_ , he thought darkly. _He thinks I’m going after Hawke._

His grip on the dagger shifted, and his control slipped slightly, so the world was limned in blue for a moment. But then Fenris had his wrist in a fierce grip.

“Fenris, what—“

“You have always been the one, Hawke, who insisted that _his_ actions and those of his demon are separate, have you not?” Fenris demanded, and Anders tried, vainly, to free his arm. Fenris ignored the efforts and pulled him to his feet.

“He is not the one who destroyed the Chantry,” Fenris said. “Merrill agrees, and if you will not listen to me, then—“

“Fenris may be right…” Merrill said softly, and Anders thought, _of all the bloody times for her to learn some damned circumspection_.

“Kill him if you will; you know I will support you. But look him in the eyes as you do it, at least,” Fenris said.

Fenris had him in a grip that meant he couldn’t turn away when Hawke grabbed his chin in a gloved fist and tilted his face up, made eye contact.

“Damn,” Hawke hissed, pulling away, sheathing his weapons.

“He is a _murderer_ ,” Sebastian hissed, advancing on the three of them. Fenris put his body between Hawke and the perceived threat.

“You told me once, that a murder committed under duress is a sin on the one who ordered it, did you not, Sebastian?”

“He killed _Elthina_!”

“And if you had known my victims personally, would your _generous_ offer of absolution disappear so easily? His fate is Hawke’s to decide.”

Sebastian scoffed. “Hawke _had_ decided. You interfered! I’m leaving, and when I come back, it will be with the might of Starkhaven’s army behind me. We will raze Kirkwall to the _ground_ if the mage yet lives by then.”

“I look forward to it,” Hawke said, that tone of teasing and bloodlust particular to him easing around the words, so that it might have been any other day; any other argument.

Sebastian scoffed and stormed away.

“Hawke?”

“Now we save a hundred innocent mages from certain death. Do try to keep from killing the Templars, too. Fenris—keep him alive. I need to have a nice, _long_ conversation with him that won’t happen if he is dead.”

And Fenris did, Maker damn him.

“Why,” Anders hissed, gasping for breath. Fenris pressed a lyrium potion on him, and he drank it greedily, even though it made his vision waver and made him realize how desperately he needed actual rest.

How likely it was that it wouldn’t be _him_ who woke from said rest.

“I enjoy bringing you low, mage,” Fenris said. “But I do not enjoy needless killing. Combine this with the fact that your companionship brings Hawke great comfort, I was grateful to find reason to prevent him bringing about your death.”

“Let me end this,” Anders demanded. “Let a Templar finish me, or give me my knife back that I may do it myself. You don’t know what this is like!”

“Don’t I?” the damned elf asked blandly, raising an eyebrow. “Aveline is injured. You must see to her.”

If it had been some cruel ploy to torture him, to keep his magic reserves near empty, they would not have been so ready with the vials of potion.

He might have preferred actual torture.

Instead, the fight through the heart of the Gallows was like a parody of the adventures they had shared; with him rendering endless aid, and Fenris constantly at _his_ side instead of Hawke’s.

Not, it seemed, that Hawke needed Fenris’s backing. “When did he get so _good_?” Anders whispered at one point, as Hawke took out most of a squad of Templars by himself, without killing a one.

Fenris grunted; “Over time. When were you last truly yourself?”

“Ella—We were saving Ella. I almost killed her, and Hawke intervened. I went to sleep that night, and… after that it’s only bits and pieces.”

The abruptness with which Fenris tackled him made him shut his eyes. _Finally_ , he thought, grateful. 

The sensation of being in the Fade overwhelmed him, and he opened his eyes, and looked all around. The Black City loomed. Justice loomed nearer. He gasped.

They were in the Gallows. “Mage!” Fenris snapped, grabbing his arm and hauling him towards an alcove.

“How’d they get the drop on us?” Hawke asked. “Nice job with that, by the way, Fenris. I didn’t know you could bring people along for the ride with that party trick of yours.”

“It is not a pleasant task. You wanted him alive though.”

“Hmm,” Hawke said, bending to touch Fenris’s cheek. “Not at the expense of your sanity, Fenris.”

“I am stronger than I once was, thanks to you, Hawke,” Fenris replied, and Anders thought they might kiss, and something twisted in his gut at the thought.

He wanted to see it. Wanted them to be happy. They’d worked things out, then.

That was good, right?

They didn’t kiss. “Magic,” Merrill said, interrupting the moment. Anders glared at here, though neither Fenris nor Hawke seemed at all fazed it. “They’re forcing the apprentices to help them. It’s not pretty. I don’t like attacking _any_ of them, but they’re _children_ , Hawke.”

“We need a Templar of our own,” Hawke was saying, but the thought of the injustice of using _children_ in this war—

“You told me once you could control this,” Fenris said. “I disagreed. I called you an abomination.” Anders squeezed his eyes shut tight. “Would you prove me right, after all this time?”

Anders snapped his eyes open, glaring at Fenris. “I should think you’d be _gloating_ by now, with how right you’ve been proven.”

“I have a blood mage at my side, moved to tears at the abuses against children she is seeing. I am defending _mages_ against those who would see them all brought down in one fell swoop. The world is both harder and easier than I ever imagined it to be. I have not been proven, in any way, _right_.”

“The children she is weeping over are mages,” Anders protested weakly.

“And you have controlled it, once again,” Fenris said, and he looked supremely smug with it.

“I hate you,” Anders whispered. “I hate all of you for making me live through this.”

“Good,” Fenris said. He turned back to Hawke, who was just then discussing with Aveline the best way to acquire a Templar of their own, and pulled him into a fierce kiss.

It wasn’t shocking, or particularly explicit, but Fenris’s gauntleted hands in Hawke’s hair, the way Hawke’s hands came to rest, ever so lightly, against Fenris’s shoulders… it was hard to watch, after a fashion.

Anders didn’t look away. When they broke apart, Aveline caught his eye, and she had a knowing expression on her face, but he shook his head and ducked behind Fenris, his appointed guardian. She knew nothing.

The win did not feel like one, though the rest of them acted as if it did. Fenris did not allow him near any of their fallen foes, so he still could not end it, and his anger rose up and up and threatened to choke him; and he was near snapping when Hawke turned weary eyes on them and said, “We should go home. I still have my questions.”

The Hawke Estate was somber; there were refugees in the foyer, and Anders couldn’t help but kneel and press a hand to each, to offer what healing he could. Fenris stayed near, hovering just behind his shoulder, and Anders wondered from what he was being guarded this time.

When all of their hurts had been seen to, he finally entered the house proper, and Hawke pressed a runestone amulet on him; it was cold and burning to the touch, as if it had just been enchanted.

“I spoke with Sandal about disrupting your connection to the Fade. I’m never certain how much he understands, but this is what he gave me. I don’t expect it will allow you to work you magic while touching it, but perhaps it will prevent Justice from asserting his will again.”

Anders closed his fingers tightly around it, breathing deeply. He nodded.

“What was it you wished to know?” he asked, not looking up at the men in the room with him. If they would leave him alone at last, he could rid them of his presence for good.

“How much of his plans were you aware of?”

“None,” Anders said. “And even if I’d known, there isn’t much I could have done to stop him, is there?”

“That’s all. Rest well, tonight. We’re leaving before dawn.”

“Leaving?” Anders asked, startled, staring up at both of them.

“Well, we can’t stay here, can we? I’ve already told the others. Those who wish to join us, will be. Isabella will be sailing off instead, but then none of us are particularly surprised by that.”

“Who are staying?” Anders asked.

“Aveline, for certain. Varric said he had business to take care of and may be able to join us, or he might have to catch up. Bethany will be bringing any mages and Templars who wish to be free of the Gallows.”

“And you’re okay with this, Fenris?” Anders asked.

Fenris shrugged. “Hawke trusts her, so I trust her.”

“And the rest of the mages,” Anders prodded. “You won’t regale them with tales of how they _deserve_ to be locked away for eternity? Made slaves to the Templars and their whims?”

“If you think to provoke me into killing you, or into leaving you unguarded so you may kill yourself, you must try harder than this.”

“He’s still trying?” Hawke demanded, grabbing Anders’s hand in his. “No! You mustn’t!”

“I have had to pry no fewer than fourteen blades from his hands. There were phials and potions too, but some of those were not poison, so I am unsure how many to count.”

“Anders!”

“There can be no compromise,” Anders whispered. That much he remembered. That much he _knew_.

“Anders, look at me,” Hawke commanded, and he obeyed. “You aren’t allowed to kill yourself until we … exorcise Justice. We can free you of him, okay? But… let us try. Let us _help you_.”

“I won’t,” Anders whispered. “I have done nothing but spoil your lives since you’ve met me. You’ll have to watch me every second. I won’t stop trying.”

Hawke nodded. “So be it, then.” Anders thought that meant he’d stop trying, that he’d even offer him a poison—Maker knew how many toxins Hawke kept about his person as a matter of course. Surely that much hadn’t changed in all this time.

Instead, Hawke seized him by the upper arm and pulled him with him up the stairs to the master suite, Fenris just behind them.

“Do we have anything we can…”

“Here,” Fenris said.

“Get undressed,” Hawke said, this time to Anders. “You can borrow something of mine to sleep in, here. Fenris, get that secured to the bedpost and clear the area within his reach.”

Once he was changed, Fenris’s hand was on his arm while Hawke changed, and he was being escorted to the bed, where his hands were comfortably bound to the headboard.

Hawke made sure the bonds wouldn’t damage his hands, and Fenris checked their security, and they climbed into bed next to him, with Fenris on the far side of Hawke, and Hawke just barely touching him.

“Morning comes quickly, Anders,” Hawke said, smoothing his hair and tucking the runestone amulet securely under his clothing.

Hawke fell asleep instantly, it seemed, and while Fenris took a bit longer, he too drifted off eventually. Once he was sure they were both out for the count, he let himself rage at the unfairness of their treatment.

They should have let him die.

Morning did not come quickly enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Fenris woke him as had become their routine, with a warm kiss as he climbed to straddle Hawke, his body hard with muscle and soft with sleep, pressed firm and perfect against Hawke.

“Mmm,” Hawke hummed into Fenris’s kiss, reaching with both hands to cradle him and prolong the contact. It was lazy, the way mornings always felt between them, and Fenris smoothed Hawke’s hair back from his face.

Hawke let his hands drift lower, and Fenris arched into the touch, which gratified some part of Hawke and made some other parts sit up and take notice.

Some mornings, as this morning, Fenris pulled away and said, “Not today, Hawke,” and Hawke had to force himself to let Fenris go; he knew if he ever once tried to hold him, that would be their very last morning.

“You see to the mage, I’ll see to getting the rest of it together for you,” Fenris added, withdrawing entirely.

Obediently, Hawke rolled over to see Anders, and the door snicked quietly shut behind Fenris as he went on his way.

Even in the dark of the pre-dawn morning, Hawke could see that Anders’s eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry if that upset you,” he said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and remembering, with the abrupt and sickening feeling of humiliation that only accompanied truly awful actions on his part, every one of the overtures Anders had made to him in the earlier years of their acquaintance. 

Anders shook his head, once, jerkily, and Hawke thought of everything else that might be upsetting him in that moment that might, for some _obscure_ and hitherto unthinkable reason have nothing at all to do with him, and he pulled Anders in so he could shed those tears against his shoulder.

“We’ll figure this out together, Anders,” he whispered into the darkness, hand curled lightly in Anders’s hair. “You aren’t alone any longer. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You should just let me go,” Anders said bitterly, even muffled as he was by Hawke’s shoulder. “I’ve killed so many people, and now I’m coming between you and Fenris.”

“If you honestly think that this is the first time Fenris and I have foregone morning sex, then you live in a very idyllic world, Anders,” Hawke said. “The man is as prickly as a hedgehog and twice as hard to get to know. Half the time he initiates sex he has to break it off partway through so he can go… work through his issues.”

Anders sniffled. “You were going to say brood,” he said, sounding amused despite himself.

“I would never say brood.”

“You were!” Anders insisted, and Hawke thought, for the first time since Fenris had made him look into one of his best friends’ eyes rather than kill him, that this might all turn out okay after all.

He smiled at Anders, and Anders smiled back, a little, in a way that Hawke hadn’t seen from him in years, and it was at that moment that he finally truly believed Fenris.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t trusted Fenris, because he did, with his life and more than his life, but just that the idea that Anders had been so completely overtaken by Justice that he had had no control over his actions had seemed so… outlandish. Beyond thinking.

It seemed to dovetail entirely too nicely with Fenris’s usual rhetoric about Anders being an abomination, he supposed.

“We need to get up,” Hawke said, after a few moments. “I had Bodahn find you some supplies, since I doubt it would be safe for you to go back to your clinic before we leave.”

He reached, hesitantly to unbind Anders’s wrists from the bedposts. “Did you—did you sleep at all?”

“No,” Anders said, dully. Hawke rubbed his brow with his free hand and sighed.

“Would you have _slept_ if we hadn’t tied you?”

Anders blinked slowly at him. “You should show me these supplies,” he said.

Hawke rolled off the bed and offered a wrapped bundle to Anders who was much slower in sitting up. He accepted the bundle and shook it out. The robes contained within were in much better repair than his old ones, and Hawke detected a flash of emotion in the otherwise blank face.

_Good_ , Hawke thought. _Be irritated. Be angry. Hate us. Feel_ something, _Anders._

Aloud, he said, “Does it fit? Will it work?”

“It’s been enchanted,” Anders noted, sounding surprised.

“Well, proper armor interferes with your casting, and Sandal is _right there_ ,” Hawke said.

“I just thought…” Anders shook his head.

“That I would tie you to my bed to prevent your killing yourself only to take you with me into battle unprotected?” Hawke shook his head, and Anders’s gaze slid away. “Whatever you think of me, Anders, know this: I want you whole, and I want you at my side.”

Anders laughed then. “You have someone at your side. You don’t need me.”

Hawke gripped Anders’s hand in his and pulled him close despite his resistance. He didn’t embrace him again, just drew him near enough to feel his heat, to meet his gaze no matter how he tried to look away.

“Need does not enter into it, no,” Hawke said. “But Anders, you have stood at my side for these many years, and now that I have finally taken up your cause, you seek only to abandon me. _Want_ , yes. I _want_ you by my side as I do my best to free mages from the shackles of the Chantry. This is what _you’ve_ wanted, isn’t it, Anders?”

“I want nothing more than an end to it,” Anders said dully, even eye to eye, and Hawke had to close his and look away at that.

“I’m so sorry, Anders,” Hawke whispered. “I would grant you anything you asked, any favor, any desire. Anything but this.”

“ _Then leave me _,” Anders said. Hawke shook his head and used his grip on Anders’s hand to pull him out of the bedroom and down the stairs behind him.__

__Even in the pre-dawn gloom, his estate was a hive of activity. “Bodahn, Anders here can help you wherever you need hands,” he offered. “Keep him busy,” he added, low and gentle. He remembered how that had helped with Bethany, after Carver, and himself, when all seemed lost entirely. “If you find you can’t keep an eye on him, send for me or Fenris at once. Don’t let him out of your sight.”_ _

__“Of course, messere,” Bodahn said, and his expression was grave, knowing. Hawke nodded and sighed, rubbing his forehead again._ _

__Bethany waited until Bodahn had taken Anders over to the kitchen._ _

__“There’s been a complication, brother mine,” she said softly._ _

__“Isn’t there always,” he said, eyes following Anders even as Bodahn put him to the task of folding bandaging linens._ _

__“Owain, one of the junior Templars, broke into the cells in the bottom of the Gallows. We had thirty one mages in solitary. Of those, fourteen have survived the night.”_ _

__Hawke started swearing and wasn’t sure he knew how to stop. “What happened? Who are they?”_ _

__“People who happened to cross the wrong Templars?” Bethany said. “All of them have been horribly tortured. Some of them are children. I wasn’t certain, last night, when you insisted he live, but….”_ _

__She glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen where Anders was now packing trail food into waxed canvas bags. “We’ll need him, won’t we?”_ _

__“How badly are they injured?”_ _

__“In their heads or their bodies? I don’t know, Hawke, but we aren’t leaving them.”_ _

__“I never suggested such a thing.”_ _

__“ _You_ didn’t.”_ _

__Hawke wondered who had, and instantly considered it might have been her Templars… but no._ _

__Her Templars had to be terrified of what might happen to them if they were seen as not being appropriately sympathetic to mages._ _

__“Your more able-bodied mages, are, of course, welcome to make their own way,” Hawke said, coldly._ _

__Bethany laughed and shook her head. “Oh, no, the horror. But in all seriousness, they’re terrified, Hawke, you can’t blame them for saying things like that.”_ _

__“As long as they aren’t acting on what they say, let them talk,” Hawke agreed._ _

__“And Anders?” she asked._ _

__“He is… Fenris believes he can be saved.”_ _

__“You?”_ _

__“I want to save him, Bethany,” Hawke said. “But when do _I_ admit defeat?”_ _

__Bethany wrapped him in an embrace that he had missed these years with her locked in the Gallows. “Never, brother. But then, when have you ever been defeated?”_ _

__He let himself be comforted by her for long moments, but then Fenris demanded his attention._ _

__“I apologize for interrupting this reunion,” Fenris said._ _

__“I hear yours was not so sweet,” Bethany said, smiling gently at him. Hawke winced. He really could do without his sister antagonizing his lover on top of everything else._ _

__“I let her live,” Fenris said, smiling just as gently. “She had betrayed me in the grossest fashion possible. I regret only that I did not make her _beg_ for her life before I gave it to her.”_ _

__Hawke wanted to do something, say something, to end this tension._ _

__“Tell me, Fenris. Was it because she was a mage?” Bethany asked._ _

__“It was because she sold her brother like chattel for the merest chance at power,” Fenris spat. “Would you do the same, little Hawke?”_ _

__Bethany shook her head and withdrew slightly. “My brother means more to me than anything. Than my life. You know this.”_ _

__“Then do not think to compare yourself to _her_ ,” Fenris snarled. “She lives. It is enough.” _ _

__There is no noise from the kitchen to signal the unwellness there, no sudden silence either. It is just… at once he looks over and _knows_ , and he forces himself to run through, to interfere._ _

__Anders had gotten a knife, somehow, and Bodahn was pressing clean bandaging on the gaping red slash in the mage’s arm which Sandal looked on, bewildered, and Orana wept. Fenris brushed past him where he stood frozen in the doorway and loaned his strength to subduing the mage._ _

__For Anders was fighting them. “Please!” he snapped, tears clogging his voice and blood staining everything in the kitchen bright crimson. Of course he’d known enough to cut deeply and dangerously on the first slice; he was a _healer_. “Just let it end.”_ _

__“No, damn you,” Hawke whispered, and Bethany finally skirted past him, her robes brushing against him and her expression serene in a way she’d never quite pulled off before she’d been locked away in the Gallows for half a decade._ _

__“Come now, Anders, let me see. I know you won’t heal it yourself, but if I don’t get a look soon, you’ll scar over, and then where would you be?”_ _

__“I only looked away for half a second, messere,” Bodahn said, shaking his head sadly. “How ever did you sleep last night?”_ _

__“Tied him to the bed with Fenris and me,” Hawke replied. “I don’t know that Fenris actually slept.”_ _

__“Had a talk with him this morning,” Bodahn said. “Seems to me like he knows better than most what’s going through the man’s head.”_ _

__“Maybe,” Hawke conceded. Bethany finally managed to heal the wound, and the kitchen was filled with the sound of Anders sobbing, bitter, hateful noises that made Hawke want to turn right back around and leave the kitchen. The fearful, awful part of it was that he might have, had he not had everyone else in the room to contend with._ _

__Easier to deal with Anders than to have Bethany or Fenris think him a coward._ _

__Fenris had Anders’s hand in a death grip, but hadn’t managed to disarm him, it appeared, and Bethany had pulled his head to her chest and was rocking him, humming a lullaby Hawke hadn’t heard since Mother had… since Mother._ _

__Bodahn was watching him with too-perceptive eyes, and he offered Hawke a flask, which Hawke hesitated only momentarily before seizing, despite the early hour._ _

__“It’ll get better,” he murmured. “He’s got friends and every one of you will look after him. It will get better once he’s had some distance from all of this.”_ _

__“I pray to the Maker you are right,” Hawke said, taking another sip from the flask. Bodahn gave him another look, this time for the uncharacteristic religious fervency._ _

__But then, if he didn’t pray to the Maker, who would he pray to? Fen’Harel, curled in his corner of the world, howling with mad laughter at the insanity of creation?_ _

__No, better, at a time like this, to trust in solid things._ _

__“Come,” Fenris said. “We need to be leaving soon. Everyone else is ready. Bodahn?”_ _

__“I’ve got everything into packs. You may need to re-disburse everything if what Bethnay said about the little ones she found is at all true, but you’ll know for certain once you’ve reached those smuggler’s caves. Until then, everyone will have to double up.”_ _

__They all looked at Anders. Hawke cleared his throat. “Those mages need these supplies if we’re to get away from Kirkwall alive. Can I trust you that far?”_ _

__“What will you do if I say no?”_ _

__“Leash you,” Fenris said without hesitation. “I will collar you and leash you and make you crawl through Darktown if you will not go this far with us of your own volition.”_ _

__Anders looked at Fenris, shocked and angry, and his grip on the knife must have loosened, because then Fenris had it to himself and was setting it aside, as far out of Anders’s reach as he could get it without letting go of Anders’s hand._ _

__“You wouldn’t,” Anders protested, shaking his head, not, apparently, noticing the loss of the weapon._ _

__“You’re right,” Fenris said, the barest hint of a smile edging against his lips. “I would not. It is rather gratifying that you realize this, however.”_ _

__Anders shook his head again, this time out of apparent disbelief._ _

__Hawke cleared his throat and offered his hand to whoever in the room might take it. “We should go, then. They’ll be frightened and nervous, waiting for us.”_ _

__“They’re fine,” Bethany said, but she extricated herself enough from Anders’s embrace to brush past Hawke and collect several packs of supplies. Hawke carefully took Anders’s elbow and the three of them loaded up as well before making for the secret passage into Darktown._ _


	3. Chapter 3

The Gallows refugees were huddled in groups of threes and fours in the cavern where Bethany had led them; a cavern Fenris recognized from the times Anders had asked Hawke’s assistance with his Mage Underground.

They were grouped like with like, Templars shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot as they watched mages, mages casting wary glances from mage to Templar and back again. The atmosphere was one of terror and despair, and he unconsciously held himself closer to Hawke to sense it.

Hawke’s hand went reassuringly to his forearm, squeezing ever so gently before pulling away. Whatever came, wherever Fenris found himself, he had Hawke at his side, at the least.

This reassured in a way that he felt wouldn’t have even a few short months ago, let alone years, as Anders had lost.

“You’ve got him, or shall I?”

“You’re the Champion,” Fenris said. “I’ll look after the mage.”

Anders was pretending not to hear them.

“Bethany said there were some in solitary, that they weren’t well. Perhaps he could look after them. Perhaps that will help.”

Fenris nodded and drew back so that Hawke could approach the oldest of the mages with Bethany, serene and calm at his side. Anders huddled near, and Fenris turned to him.

“There are injured, here. Hawke would have you heal them,” he announced. “Come.”

Anders shuddered bodily, but he took a step forward, as if complying, and Fenris forced himself to remain impassive at the mage’s obvious reluctance, though he wished he could say something to snap the spell. He’d tried, yesterday, and nothing had worked. Today he had little energy for this.

Together, they approached the last group of mages, injured and broken, laying as if so many discarded toys or rotting corpses in the filth of Darktown.

"Not you!" A girl bit out, bringing herself bodily between Anders and a boy, supine on the dirt. "No, don't touch him! I want _him_!"

She'd gestured at Fenris, and Anders turned dull eyes on him as well, so he was compelled to take a step forward, and then another.

"Me?" he asked, jerking a shoulder dismissively. "He is the healer. He has healed my hurts many times."

"He is a human man." She whispered. "You... you understand better, don't you?"

And Fenris saw the boy, then, elven, ears parting his hair, and he saw the jagged cuts carving his chest. He had learned to read, Hawke curled around him, tracing letters and words for him to know, to learn, and he knew, from that, that this was a man's name. "Mage," he demanded, falling to his knees at the boy's side, taking his hand with a gentleness he had not mustered for anyone in years. "Can you heal this so it doesn't scar?"

"She doesn't want me," Anders replied, dull, monotone.

"She does not know you," Fenris replied acerbically. "Come here. I will not let anyone hurt this boy," he added, for the girl's benefit. She had, after all, been right.

"What--" Anders started to ask, but before he could actually demonstrate emotion or compassion, he cut himself off. Fenris shut his eyes against that, and looked back down at the boy.

"Will you be able to prevent scarring," Fenris asked again, his voice hoarse. He only realized then how much emotion he, himself was feeling. It all felt so distant, like he was looking on a painting of the scene, not living inside it himself.

"I think so, yes," Anders said. "Let me just..." he tugged an amulet out from inside his robes and Fenris moved slightly so he could touch the boy's hair. He was not normally one for touch, but this particular boy, at this particular time...

"Are you alright?" the girl asked him quietly. He looked up at her, and she was unfocussed, blurry. He nodded regardless. "I'm going to go get the Champion," she said, darting off.

He ignored that, and Anders worked his hardest on healing the boy; he could tell because instead of simply knitting up and scarring over, the wounds were slowly closing, inside out, and the boy was writhing with pain.

"He is the best healer in the city," Fenris said gently. "He will ensure that you are well."

"He's not coming," the girl said, moments later, breathless on her return. Fenris nodded, stroking the boy's hair one last time. 

"How many others need healing?" he asked her.

"A dozen, I suppose?" she said.

"Show the healer. I will speak with the Templars. Are there any others like this?"

"No? Yes? Not the same... but some of them, yes."

"Watch the healer," Fenris snarled, and he stood again, stalking over to the cluster of Templars.

"Which of you," he hissed, "did that to the boy. To those _mages_ ," he demanded. The name carved on the chest like a brand of ownership for all to see.

They all huddled back, refusing to meet his eyes, save one, whose gaze flashed coldly silver-blue, a reflection of Fenris's flickering brands.

"None of us, I swear. Bethany wouldn't have let any of _them_ come along."

Fenris drew his sword, and the Templar before him did not flinch back. "The elf? No one knows his name, truly. But Ser Tomas... called him his pet." His tone was one of true disgust. "I did what I could. I brought them water; food when I dared. All of us did our best. But..."

Fenris stared at his blade, unseeing. He did not lose so much control as to bite out a furious cry, but he understood the impulse, at once, and the fury flowing through him made the crisp bite of the Fade and the agony of his lyrium brands all too palpable.

"Messere, pardon," the Templar, the only one brave enough to face him, said. "But is it true? Are you-- is that _lyrium?_ " His expression... it should have been unreadable. Fenris wished, in the deep, aching bits of himself that recognized the pain on the unconscious elven boy's face, and the deadness in Anders's eyes, that he was wrong when he thought it a filthy, covetous sort of avarice that even the Templar before him might not recognize within himself.

"It is," Fenris said. "Your name?"

"Ser Owain," the Templar said. "Knight-Lieutenant Owain."

"Owain," Fenris said. "My duty is to guard the healer. Yours is the guard the rest of the mages. I suggest we each get on with ours. If you see any of the ones who have injured these here, I expect it to be brought to my attention."

"Of course, Messere."

Fenris smiled. It was a think Hawke had taught him; to smile at people to put them at ease, when truly he meant that he was watching his back more against them than against any other.

Hawke was having a quiet but intense argument with the oldest group of mages at the edge of the cavern, and Anders was glowing slightly, golden and blue with healing energy. Fenris made his way back to his side and half of the Templars joined him, standing well away from the skittish but now healed mages.

“How are they?” Fenris asked, looking at them. The girl was handing out clean clothing; simple but not cheap, linen shirts and leather trousers. Durable for travel. Bodahn had done right by them.

Anders finished up with his current patient, a girl, younger still than the elven boy, who clutched the ragged edges of a blanket to her chest. “Alive. We are, all of us, alive.”

“It is preferable.” Fenris said. “Alive and free. You have sought this for the entirety of our acquaintance, mage. Do not tell me something has changed.”

“Everything has changed,” Anders replied dully. The girl was staring with wide-eyed fright at the Templars Fenris had brought over with him.

“What is your name, girl,” Fenris asked, hunching low and out of grabbing distance. He remembered well this wariness.

“Mel-Melissa, messere,” she said in a stuttering whisper.

“Melissa,” Fenris said, contemplating it. “A very beautiful name. Here, my friend has clothing for you, and when you are feeling well, there will be food while we walk.”

On cue, the other mage girl brought over some clothing, and Melissa took it from her with a wary gaze still latched onto the nearest Templar. Fenris looked over his shoulder at him, and tried to decide on an approach, tried to think of what he would have accepted, newly freed and violently terrified with it.

Settled on Hawke’s approach, however poorly it had worked.

“You, ser,” Fenris said, gesturing that Templar nearer. The girl shuddered. Anders found another mage to heal—Fenris kept a weather eye on him even as he tended the girl and kept the elven boy in sight. “Your name.”

“Paivel, messere,” the Templar murmured.

“Paivel, this is Melissa. Is it not your duty to defend mages from those who do not understand them, from those who fear them?” Fenris asked.

Paivel nodded vehemently, then collapsed to a half-sitting position, mimicking Fenris, a foot further away. “It’s why we’re here,” he whispered fervently. “It’s what Bethany asked us.”

Fenris nodded. “Melissa, we have a long road ahead of us. Paivel and his brothers will defend all of us, or I will deliver his heart to you myself.”

Paivel jerked away from him—there was hardly a person in Kirkwall who had not seen him fighting, had not seen him ripping organs from living flesh.

Melissa smiled, and Anders stood from his patient and staggered slightly. Fenris went to his side.

“Tired?” Fenris asked, quietly enough that even the mage firl who still held the spare clothing couldn’t hear him.

Anders shook his head. “Too much healing at once,” he murmured. “And Justice wants…” he shook his head and fingered his amulet. “I won’t, though.” Eyes with just the hint of old humor and new sardonic self-loathing met his. “I _can_ control it.”

“Here,” the mage girl said, offering Anders a familiar blue vial. Anders looked at it with a great deal of suspicion. Fenris tried to remember the last time he’d seen the mage take a lyrium potion, failed.

“We’ll need this to keep the Templars from going crazy,” he said, twirling it in his fingers. Fenris spared a glance for Paivel, still holding himsef awkwardly, with Melissa no longer so wary before him.

“We?” Fenris asked.

“You and Hawke.”

“Aren’t you coming with us, Anders?” the mage girl asked.

“Only as far as they make me,” Anders replied. His eyes flicked down to Fenris’s belt knife, and Fenris shook his head emphatically.

“And if you had succeeded last night,” Fenris had said. “What of these? These were the mages you wished to save, above all else, were they not? Not those, too busy politicking and stabbing each other in the back to worry about the rest of Thedas, but… the _children_ kept locked up in dungeons for Templar amusement? How many would have died without your intervention, today?”

“Your elven boy, certainly, and that young girl; can’t be older than eleven. Two of the others,” Anders admitted. “Bethany could have healed the rest.”

“And then walked through these tunnels the rest of the day?”

Anders looked at Fenris. Fenris met his gaze evenly, coolly.

“No,” Anders admitted.

“Then they all would have died,” Fenris said in low tones. Hawke was moving among the groups now, passing around packs, reassuring the youngest. The elven boy screamed at his approach and shrank back, and Fenris didn’t spare any thought for Anders, simply moved to the boy’s side, glaring up at his lover who had both hands up, weaponless.

“ _It is safe_ ,” Fenris whispered in the language of the Fog Warriors, and the boy looked at him with eyes that were clouded with memories, unseeing of the present.

He touched the boy’s shoulder, and the boy hunched in around the touch, not avoiding it, but only in the sense that he was _not_ avoiding it with every ounce of will he had in his small body.

Fenris could feel the smile curling his lips.

“Someone will need to watch him,” Hawke said, sounding concerned and broken behind Fenris.

‘Yes,” Fenris said.

“You do know he’s a mage, Fenris,” Anders said, sounding much more like his old self than he had since the Chantry.

Fenris turned a feral grin on the mage, and found an answering look on his face. “He is many things, _mage_ ,” he replied.

He turned back to the boy. “You are safe,” he said. “Remember? This man has healed you, and this man is responsible for bringing you and the healer to this place. We are going someplace far away.”

He offered the boy a hand. “You are free,” he concluded.

The boy stared at his hand as if it might transform, at once, into a many-tailed whip, so Fenris shrugged and withdrew it.

“He’s too weak to carry anything,” Anders said. “Don’t push him.”

The unexpected defense from that quarter had Fenris glancing over, checking Anders’s eyes, but they were already cold and empty again, if they had held any spark of life when he’d spoken.

Fenris had to assume they had.

Hawke pulled Fenris in against his chest, and it had taken months for Fenris to accept the manhandling, but he did today without flinching, and then Hawke nuzzled his ear and pressed a warm kiss to his temple, and Fenris knew he was smiling, because it was Hawke showing him genuine affection, which always made him smile.

Melissa and the elven boy both had wide, terrified eyes focused intently on him, and he barely noticed them.

“Don’t tease me,” he murmured, and Hawke chuckled delightedly, so he turned and kissed him properly, and Hawke’s hands settled in at his waist while Fenris clutched him fiercely and kissed him deeply.

“Wow,” Bethany said quietly from somewhere far off. “The people who claim Hawke’s finally tamed that dreaded Tevinter ex-slave have never seen you two kiss, have they?”

“I think it’s lovely,” Anders said, sounding defensive.

“I never said it wasn’t,” Bethany said softly.

Fenris pulled away, albeit reluctantly, and Hawke still had laughter in his eyes. “We should move on,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Yes,” Ser Owain said. “Let’s.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I had like three-fourths of this written already, but then I stalled. Hope it suits!

They emerged from the tunnels, blinking against the sunlight, blind as newborn kittens. Anders had Fenris and his newly adopted mage-children behind him, and that older mage-girl just to his left, talking incessantly in his ear.

They emerged, also, into a group of Dalish, bristling with arrows and knives. He reached for his defensive spells, his heals and healing auras, and found nothing, floundering for a few critical moments that ended with the girl next to him gasping in pain and clutching a shoulder suddenly sprouted an arrow. He wrenched the runestone amulet away from bare skin and brought his shields up, casting them around every member of his group, though it hurt to spread them so wide.

He could hear Fenris cursing, and soft, muffled noises of a person in pain that may have been coming from the girl next to him or from further behind him.

Hawke was talking, a thousand words in a short space, meant to diffuse a situation that-- and a flash of memory, there, he'd thought he wouldn't be able to remember a thing. Merrill crying, and half a clan of Dalish coming down upon them like they had _all_ been possessed. "Maker's breath," he hissed, struggling to maintain control in the face of that flashback, in the face of Vengeance roaring at him from behind the Veil, in the face of how very, very little he actually _cared_.

Fenris drew on the power of his brands. Anders always knew, at some level, when he did so. It was like the crisp-cold feeling of a lightning storm in the tower at Kinloch, or the too-blue texture of a crazed Templar's eyes. What he'd never before experienced, however, was a double-dozen other mages' reactions to it, all at once.

A massive indrawn breath, the feel of defensive spells, all drawn to the fore. Censure in every one of their gazes. Oh, if only they knew... And Anders let most of his shielding drop. The mages could defend themselves. The children he had healed, no, of course not, and Hawke and Fenris and Merrill (Merrill?) he'd been shielding automatically in conflicts since before he could remember (hah!).

"Stop it!" Merrill shouted. "Everyone stop it!" Anders wasn't about to drop his arcane shields on her say so, but he did appreciate that every one of the Dalish hunters (and now that he looked at them, there were an awful lot of younger elves and women for a group of Dalish hunters) lowered their weapons, and how Hawke gestured and all of the Templars sheathed their own. The older mages all had eyes only for Fenris, and Anders felt something protective stir in his chest, something that might have been emotion scrabbling against the morass of guilt that he was feeling. He deliberately stepped to the mage girl's side and snapped the arrowhead off so he could remove it and let the healing spell take care of the wound. She smiled gratefully at him, and he didn't go so far as to offer her a smile in return, but he...

He wondered whether any of those other mages, so comfortable in their tower, would have healed her so cleanly, so promptly. These mages had no idea how to be apostates on the run. See how quickly they had turned on one terrified ex-slave? Not... of course, that Anders was a particularly stellar example in that regard. Or that Fenris was particularly terrified any longer.

Fenris's mages weren't injured at all, thankfully, and soon they were moving again, Merrill's Dalish right alongside them, and with them in such close proximity, it was obvious how poorly off the elves actually were. Anders offered a bag of trail rations to the nearest, a heavily pregnant woman who had barely reached adulthood, and she refused to take it from him. _Of course_ , he thought, feeling everything wash away back to that gray non-feeling again. _No compromise_.

It hadn't worked out very well for the Dalish either, had it?

“You really ought to eat something,” he told the pregnant woman. There were two distinct groups walking, now, and he thought they might separate out into three before the day was over. He and Fenris, Paivel and one other Templar had taken up with the weakest, the pregnant Dalish woman, those he’d had to heal of the mages and Dalish alike. The youngest Dalish were tagging along with the oldest up front, but there were some Dalish children speaking in low, curious tones with the least frightened of the mage children.

Easy pickings, if anyone were following them, he thought, then crushed that thought, for he didn’t truly care.

“I don’t want your food,” she said bitterly. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“Take it for the baby’s sake,” he coaxed. “It’s hot, and walking like this can’t be easy.”

“I am strong enough,” she said.

“Of course you are,” Anders replied, wrinkling up his brow. “Or you wouldn’t be here. But—“

Fenris jabbed him hard in the sided with his elbow and he turned a scowl on the bristling elf. Fenris shook his head a little. Of all the stubborn—

But then, who better to understand stubborn, dog-headed pride?

“I am Fenris,” Fenris announced generally. He held the hand of the elven boy he’d demanded healed without scarring… (Not that Anders would have allowed scarring like _that_ to remain, of course.)

“Variel,” the woman said. “Keeper Merrill has said our clans will join, for now.”

Fenris nodded once, sharp and certain. “We face many dangers, and it is better to face them with a larger force.”

Anders mouthed the word ‘Keeper’ over again and tied not to shudder at the thought of Merrill being responsible for people’s lives. If that flashback had been at all true, then these Dalish had lost over half their clan to her idiocy and now they put their trust in her.

“If you are not hungry, then do not eat,” Fenris said. “But while your clan accompanies us, our food is your food. It is only fair.”

“When did you become the diplomat?” Anders muttered angrily, which wasn’t right, because he could think of a double dozen times when, when there weren’t mages involved, Fenris had used political savvy and diplomacy to back Hawke up instead of his sword. His tongue was almost as silver as the great Champion’s himself, as long as magic wasn’t involved.

“I—“ The woman looked to the ground and watched her footing for some time, then she said “I would thank you for the rations, mage.”

“Healer,” Fenris corrected, which felt odd. Anders offered her the bag of food again silently, and clutched at the runestone amulet to keep Vengeance quiet in his mind.

“And what of their names?”

“Melissa and Magrethe,” Fenris said, gesturing to the girls, “Ser Paivel and Ser Gavin.”

There was a conspicuous silence that should have been filled with the elven boy’s name, but wasn’t, and Anders wondered how Variel could bear not to ask. He waited a dozen paces, two, then…

“The boy?” he asked.

“He has yet to speak,” Fenris said, but Anders could sense the way Fenris’s posture changed on that note, the way he tensed and leaned in just slightly, ready to defend the boy.

“He will when he’s ready,” Anders replied with a great deal more confidence than he felt. His eyes found Fenris’s belt knife, and Fenris’s gaze went hard and cold, and he flicked his focus back to Variel, noting her physical state.

She was limping slightly, and she was carrying low, which wasn’t terribly unusual for as late-stage as she seemed to be.

He wondered whether he could ask her questions about her physical health, how intimate they could be if she didn’t mind.

“How far along do you think you are?” he finally settled on.

She flicked an assessing stare up and down his body, and finally settled on staring at the path ahead of them. “Far enough,” she said. Then, more quietly. “Do you know, Merrill has never delivered a babe before?”

Anders was not surprised to hear that, but he protested more out of form than anything, because he couldn’t’ let Fenris be the only one with a silver tongue, “Surely when she was training with Marethari—“

“No; children are very rare among our people, and while we have many now, they all came after we arrived on Sundermount.” 

Anders looked at the children, considered their ages, wondered. “Huh,” he said.

Maybe it was the water, or the thinness of the veil, or…

“It was a blessing from Asha’bellanar, I think. It is why we did not move on, as we should have.”

Anders shivered a little, but he managed to nod sagely. The elven boy tripped then, and Fenris caught him, but he wrenched his shoulder with the sudden movement and his ankle twisted and a silent hiss of pain escaped the boy’s lips. Anders felt something aching and raw inside of him reopen at the noise and he edged closer to them, laying a hand on Fenris’s hand, since he didn’t dare touch the boy without cause.

Through Fenris, he could sense the pain, and that it wasn’t as minor as all of that, the brittleness of his joints from long starvation, and the roaring void of his thoughts.

The iron will holding back the Fade, and the shining burst of anger that would draw every spirit and demon to him while he dreamed.

How the boy failed to succumb…

Fenris was between them, rock-steady and cool and calm, and Anders let the energies pool in him for a moment, to rest, to ground, and the way Fenris was watching him, he _knew_ , and he wondered if an apology was called for for that.

It hovered on the edge of his tongue, about to trip off, when the world became blue limned again and it was only then that he sensed Paivel’s proximity, and Gavin’s.

“Hold,” Fenris said calmly, and Anders fumbled for the amulet, missed. Fumbled again and shoved it against his chest, where his collarbones met, and then all he could feel of Fenris was the solid warmth of his hand and the roughness of his callouses, and of the boy he felt nothing at all.

“Sorry,” Anders said. “I didn’t realize it wasn’t touching bare skin.”

Fenris didn’t reply, but Magrethe did. “I think Ser Paivel and Ser Gavin are going to have to get used to not looming up over mages, because being intimidating isn’t their job anymore.”

“Yes it is,” Anders heard himself saying. He hadn’t meant to reply aloud, but now that he was, well, “We’re sitting ducks out here. We need all the intimidation we can get. But… We’re also all of us on knifes edge and having Templars looming isn’t helping with that.”

Magrethe nodded. “It’s a wonder none of those in that dungeon had turned, yet. It makes me worry how many had, before. How many were driven to madness that we lost.”

Anders was aware, then, of how near his hands were to Fenris’s belt, and he wondered how well Magrethe could heal—not well at all, he suspected. Fenris was distracted, because the boy was still frozen with fear and pain, and no one else was nearly so focused on him as Fenris. Not even, he suspected, Hawke, if Hawke were near enough to notice him.

He slid the belt knife free under the sound of Paivel’s protests, and he stared at it, glittering in the sunlight.

And then he thought of Merrill, and how she was the Keeper to a clan of Dalish, half of whom she’d murdered, and how she’d never delivered a baby before.

And he thought of the little boy clinging to Fenris’s hand, and the iron core of will at the center of him.

The dagger glinted in the sunlight, and Fenris turned to face him. His eyes were sad, and Anders thought about that too, about how he’d knelt at the boy’s side and insisted that Anders heal him without scarring.

Hawke, he thought, was happy with Fenris, who sometimes shied from his touch, but he’d let Ander’s cling to him like a frightened child, earlier, and he’d brought him clothing and herbs and potions.

Hawke had brought him more than that.

He reversed his grip on the dagger, so the blade was in his hand, the flat of it against his palm, and he offered it back to Fenris.

“Fine,” he said, and everything around him was ugly and mean and poor and full of death and torture, but, “Fine. You win.”

Fenris nodded, and if anything, he looked even sadder as he took the blade back from Anders and dropped it home within its sheathe.

It was still there, glittering within his mind, sharp and deadly and perfect, a silent end to a life without compromise, but.

But Fenris had won, and the little boy had that iron core of will to draw on, and Variel had a babe to bring into the world, and Hawke had a revolution to shepherd.


End file.
